The following newsletter is published monthly by the WebPosition people.
Although
the newsletter subtly promotes their WebPosition product, I believe the
content has
enough timely value to the readers of this list regarding current changes
in some of
the major search engines to merit posting. I have no assotiation with
WebPosition
except as a subscriber to their informative newsletter.
Tom Fosson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
________________________________________________________
MarketPosition (tm) Monthly
August 1998 Issue
"...because submitting to search engines
is just NOT enough."
Techniques for Search Engine Positioning
to Build Site Traffic
________________________________________________________
>> This publication may be freely redistributed if copied in
its ENTIRETY <<
IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE:
- Yahoo changes their ranking system
- Why HotBot has become more important
- Tips for Ranking Better in HotBot
- Going to Submit a New Page? Not so fast!
HTML version: http://www.webposition.com/mp-0898.htm
Yahoo changes their ranking system
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yahoo, the most popular search engine on the Web, recently
reversed the way they do default searches. In the past, a
search for "online shopping" would look for Web sites which
contained the phrase "online shopping" in Yahoo's summary
description of the Web site.
Now, a search for any keyword or phrase will search Yahoo's
list of CATEGORY descriptions first for a match, followed
by a search of the Web site descriptions. What this means
is that for popular keywords, the first pages of results may
not list any Web sites at all, only Yahoo categories. In
the case of a search for the keyword combination, "online
shopping", the first three pages of results are ALL categories,
before any Web sites are even listed (a search for "computers"
results in dozens of PAGES of categories before Yahoo displays
any Web sites!). For other less popular terms which aren't
included within a category description, the new search default
may not make a big difference.
What does this change from Web site searches to Category searches
mean? It means the categories you choose when submitting
to Yahoo, and your alphabetical company name listing in those
categories has become even more important since people will
likely be selecting a category instead of seeing a list of
sites.
Once the category matches have been listed, Yahoo then displays
the same categories, in the same order with Web sites containing
the most relevant keyword/phrase matches beneath each category.
The ranking of Web sites returned during a standard search
appear to be different than when someone chooses to search
"within a Yahoo category."
The best thing to do is to follow the many tips provided in
our special report on search engine positioning (included
FREE when you buy WebPosition) on properly submitting to Yahoo.
If you've already submitted and have been added in a way you
don't like, you're options are limited. Getting Yahoo to
change your listing, once added, is next to impossible based
on our experience and feedback from subscribers. As crazy
as it sounds, it may be easier to just leave that listing
there, then create a new alphabetically pleasing company name
and a new Web site, and submit it properly. In an ideal world,
Yahoo would be concerned that the listing and summary descriptions
were current and matched the content of the site well, but
we don't live in an ideal world. Asking them to change a
listing, even if the entire content of your site has changed,
is generally futile.
Why HotBot has become more important
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If a search term or phrase is not found in Yahoo's list of
reviewed Web sites, Yahoo used to default to an AltaVista
search - a search engine with a larger database. You'd be
surprised how many two and three word phrases don't produce
any matches within Yahoo's relatively small directory database.
Until July 1st, Yahoo default searched AltaVista. However,
Yahoo recently negotiated a new deal with Inktomi, the engine
which powers HotBot.
Having a good ranking in HotBot is now much more important
than it was before, because of the immense amount of traffic
that Yahoo commands. Conversely, AltaVista is rumored to
have lost nearly a fourth of it's traffic by falling out of
favor with Yahoo.
The bad news is that Yahoo is currently using only a subset
of the HotBot database. Therefore, you may show up in HotBot,
and not in the Yahoo/HotBot results. On the brighter side,
potentially anyway, your competitors may bite the bullet causing
YOU to rank higher than you did in HotBot's standard database.
I expect Yahoo to increase the size of their Inktomi/HotBot
database, so this issue may go away with time. As it stands
now, there appears to be no way to specifically submit to
Yahoo's version of HotBot, except by submitting to HotBot
and hoping Yahoo sees it or puts it in eventually.
We had an old Web site that happened to rank well on various
keywords in HotBot. We've now seen traffic increase dramatically
to that site all coming from Yahoo's HotBot searches. In
fact, we're currently getting more traffic from Yahoo's HotBot
searches, than we are from HotBot itself!
Tips for Ranking Higher in HotBot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In general, HotBot has always been harder to rank well than
most engines. However, there's some tips that will definitely
improve your odds:
1) Use keywords within the link portion of your href tags.
Example: <A HREF="pagename.htm">keyword</a>
Include at least two links on the page that includes the keyword
you are targeting. HotBot appears to assign greater relevancy
to keywords it finds in links.
2) Place keywords within the URL. www.keyword.com is ideal,
but www.mydomain.com/keyword.htm will help too. Be sure to
separate multiple keywords with a period or dash such as blue-widgets.htm
or blue.widgets.htm.
To illustrate this theory, do a search on the word "volcano"
on HotBot without the quotes. You should see a large number
of pages in the top 10 which include the word volcano in their
domain name. Not all of the matching Web sites include this
keyword, but many do. Now go and look at the second set of
10 matches. Many of the URLs there include the keyword in
their PAGE NAME. Based on this, and other tests, there's
sufficient evidence to suggest that using the keyword within
your URL will help.
3) The META Keyword and the META Description tags are both
very important to HotBot. Be sure to include both of them,
and list variations and synonyms of your keyword. Do not
go overboard in keyword repetition in the META tags. One
to three occurrences of the same keyword is sufficient.
4) Go easy on the total number of keywords you place on the
page. Try not to let your keyword count exceed 2% of the
total words in the body area for HotBot. This is called "keyword
weight." Engines vary on what weight they want to see, but
often its in the 1-5% range.
Placing keywords in the URL, link text, and domain name can
help with other engines too. Therefore, make it a habit to
include these keyword placements in all your pages when you
can.
Going to Submit a New Page? Not So Fast!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Submitting has become more and more complicated in recent months.
Many engines are employing new rules, limits, and preferences
not only for how your page should look, but how you should
submit the page. Pay careful attention to these new submission
guidelines given on the submit page of each search engine.
Something they may not tell you though, is that submitting
your important internal pages directly to the engine may actually
hurt your chances of ranking high on the search engine, at
least on Alta Vista!
If you've been to Alta Vista lately, you may have noticed that
they now request you submit only your home page, and they
will then "spider" the rest of your site by following the
links from that page to your other pages. Unfortunately for
larger sites, they will only spider about 400 pages on a single
site before stopping, and will only go down about 3 levels
at the most.
I'm also seeing a body of evidence that suggests Alta Vista
may be placing greater weight on pages that they found or
"spidered" themselves, rather than those that you submitted
directly. Therefore, if you're in a competitive keyword area,
a smarter strategy may be to create a page with links to your
other pages, and simply submit the main page and let Alta
Vista find the rest. The disadvantage is you may have to
wait for weeks before Alta Vista gets around to indexing those
other pages, and there's a chance they may never get around
to it. If you have the patience though, this technique may
give you a competitive edge over other well designed pages.
At a minimum with AltaVista, avoid submitting more than a few
pages on the same day. Submitting too many at once can cause
them all to be rejected. The exact number they allow is somewhat
ambiguous, one per day is the safest, but you may be able
to get away with as many as five or ten.
Other engines may or may not start favoring indirect submissions
in the same manner, but keep in mind that some, like Infoseek
will never spider your other (internal) pages. You must normally
submit each and every page you want to appear in their index,
but do not submit more than 50 in one day to Infoseek.
LAST MONTH:
~~~~~~~~~~
Last month I talked about several important topics such as:
- WebPosition at Internet World '98, July 15th Chicago, Illinois.
- Yahoo case study - iDOT.computers gets rank!
- We learn a few NEW things about Lycos' ranking method
- Your stories continued - We asked, you shared your success
- wow!!
If you missed these or other key discussions, you can find
the back issues at:
http://www.webposition.com/newsletters.htm
LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I certainly hope you find this newsletter of value in your
marketing efforts. If you have any suggestions, tips, or
other comments, just REPLY to this e-mail.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MarketPosition is written by Brent Winters, President of FirstPlace
Software, with editing and contributions by Frederick Marckini,
President of Response Direct, Inc.
OTHER RESOURCES:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FirstPlace Software produces several products including WebPosition,
the first software program to report your search positions
on the major search engines and to help you in improving those
positions.
You may download a FREE trial of WebPosition at:
http://www.webposition.com
You may call us at 1-800-962-4855 if you have questions not
addressed on our site. You will also find an array of additional
tips and techniques for improving your search positions in both
the WebPosition Help File and the Reports it generates.
FirstPlace Software also offers a complete report on search
engine positioning entitled "Secrets to Achieving a Top 10
Position". This 110+ page report compiles all the latest
information about the major search engines and how you can
improve your positions in each. Currently, as a special bonus
offer, this $79 report is included FREE with your purchase
of WebPosition.
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(c) copyright 1998 FirstPlace Software, Inc.
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